George Thorogood

At 28, Delaware's most dangerous Destroyer already growled like an old roadhouse drunk, and at 58 he remains just as gritty. The Dirty Dozen returns him to Capitol after a dozen years and three indie labels, and it's a purist, often stodgy, affair of backdoor-man covers with raunchy blooze riffs: nothing he wrote, and none of the jazz or Tex-Mex that lightened 2006's The Hard Stuff. The second half comprises six resuscitated "fan favorites." But things rev up whenever a sax blows, and during fast numbers.